What is a Scientific Presentation ?

Today’s Agenda
• Aims of Scientific Presentation
• Scientific Presentation Skills
• Planning a presentation
• Making oral presentation
• Handling questions
2

3
Aims of Scientific Presentation
Importance of scientific presentation
• Important means of communicating scientific
information
• A straight and interactive way to make your scientific
outcomes understood
• A basic skill for graduate research and your further
research career

4
Element 2
Title Presentation of Dissertation Proposal
Task details You are required to present your dissertation proposal and to defend your research approach. You
will have 10 minutes to make a presentation to your supervisor. You should aim to have
approximately 5-6 slides and leave 3 minutes for questions. An electronic copy of your slides must
be submitted through Turn It In in Blackboard in PDF format by Friday of the week in which this
element is due.
Marking Guide Criteria Issues mark marking breakdown
where appropriate
Quality of
Presentation
Quality of slides (5)
Clarity and readability
of information of slides
(5)
Structure and
coherence of
presentation (5)
Ability to respond to
questions and to
defend proposal (5)
20 Quality of
Presentation
Total 20

Group discussion
• What characterizes a good oral presentation
• What characterizes a bad presentation
5

6
A good presentation …

7
A good presentation …
• Audience can understand your work, be convinced
and interested in your work, and inspired!
• Content are well organized, clear, to the point
• Good presentations reflect well on speaker!

8
A bad presentation …

9
A bad presentation …
• Audience won’t see your work is great
• Slides are neither understandable nor easy to see
• Not good impression on speaker

Scientific Presentation Skills
10
Workflow of Presentation
Make
presentation
Handle
questions
Plan
presentation

Scientific Presentation Skills
Planning a presentation
• Thinking about the aim
• Developing presentation structure
• Preparing presentation slides
Making oral presentation
• Structuring presentation
• Conducting presentation
Handling questions
• Answering questions
• Acting as opponent
11

Planning a Presentation
12
Before preparing contents/slides of presentation,
always think about what is the aim of your
presentation
Thinking about the aim first

• What is the overall goal of my presentation?
• To understand my research work
• …
• What is the title of my presentation?
• Specific to my research work
13
Ask yourself

• What are the main points /key messages I want to
make to the audience?
• 1, 2,3, …
• I, II, III, …
• a, b, c, …
• To which details ?
• Include enough detail to make presentation understandable
• Not including so much details which fails to fit within the
time assigned
14
Ask yourself

• What do I want the audience to do after listening to my
presentation?
• Comments / advice / suggestions to my research
• Who, where, and when am I making the presentation?
• Who is the audience? How many people will there be in the audience?
• What are the benefits to the audience of my speech?
• What do the audience know of the subject?
• How does this change my approach?
• What aspects will they be interested in?
• Where will the presentation take place? Equipment do you need like
laptop, data storage, whiteboard, projector, laser pointer, etc?
• What time am I presenting? How long will be my speech?
• …
15
Ask yourself

16
Thinking about the aim

17
Developing presentation structure
• What to say
• In what order

• Title
• Outline
• Introduction/background
• Arguments/motivations
• Aim and objectives
• Approach
• Results
• Conclusions
• Future work
18
Developing presentation structure

Group discussion
• What characterizes good presentation slides
• How will you prepare presentation slides
19

• Convey key information
• Contain appropriate level of details
• Be clear, concise, readable and understandable
• Be interesting and avoid boring
• Avoid over stimulation
20
Principles of slide design
Preparing presentation slides

• Layout
 Try to use a consistent layout on all (or most) of your slides
to make your presentations easier to understand
 Placing heading at the same position
 Use bullets and font sizes in a consistent way
 Placing figures in relation to text in a consistent way
21
Guidelines for making slides – (1)

• Font size
 Be noted that you are close to the projector while your
audience is far from the screen - make sure the audience
sitting at the rear can read clearly
 Font should never be smaller than 18 points; If the font size
has reached less than 18 point, try to
 Remove some of the text
 Split up the text and put it on separate slides
22

• Use headings
 Each slide has a short heading showing to which part of the
presentation it belongs
 Help audience to keep track of what aspect you are talking
about at a particular moment
23

• Use short expressions
 Do not put all the text, code, or explanation directly onto
the slides
 Use short expressions rather than sentences, but not be
cryptic
 Always explain shortened phrases on the slides
24

• Highlight/emphasis
 If having a lot of text on a slide is unavoidable (e.g. showing
quotes), highlight important words or concepts using color,
boldface or underlining
 Help audience to grasp the meaning quickly
25

• Use bullets well organized
 Organize the levels of
 Hierarchy do you think
– You need to express
 Your point
 Use indentation and
 Keep consistent across all slide
– Decrease font size
 With nested level of list
26

• Know slide boundaries
 Audience cannot read text that runs off the side of the
slides
27

• Color and contracts guidelines
 White background, black text is clearest
– Can use other dark text color
– But be careful – do not be distracting
 Make sure to not use light-on-white or white-on-light
 Do not using glaring colors
– If not an art major, do not have to get fancy
28

• Numbering slides
 Put a small slide number in the lower right hand corner of
each slide
 The number should be small and sufficiently close to the
edge of the slide not be confused with the contents
 Any one asking questions after your presentation can refer
to the slide number in the question
29

• Use visuals
 Graphs, charts, maps, drawings, models,
 Images, photos, video, films, etc
30
earth
moon orbit`s
earth
last (third)quarter
gibbous moon
full moon
gibbous moon
first quarter
crescent
new moon
crescent
waning Moon
waxing Moon
SUN
Forms of visual

• Use visuals
 To illustrate points easier to understand in visual form but
difficult in a verbal form - reinforce ideas and facilitate
interpretation
 To focus the audience’s attention, involve and motivate the
audience
31
Why use visualisation techniques

• Use visuals
 Graphs can also be enemy
 Simplify graph and make audience easy to catch
 Explain it - Pick a line, any line
32
Use graphs properly

• Equations
 Do you really need all those equations?
– If you don’t need them, do not use them; complex equations make
audience lost
– If you do need them, keep it simple; give a plain-text description of
it. Do not get into too much details
33

• Results
 Do not show lots of results
– Give a simple description/summary of it. Do not get into too much
details
– Graphs are helpful
34

• Notes/manuscripts
 Write down what you are going to say will
– help practicing
– Avoid losing points
 Mainly used for practicing before presentation rather than
during presentation
35

• A typical presentation has three parts
• The beginning (Introduction)
• The middle (body)
• The end (conclusion)
Making Oral Presentation
37
Structuring your presentation – (1)

• The Beginning
• Get the audience’s attention or signal the beginning
• Greet audience
• Introduce yourself
38

• The Beginning (cont’d)
• Give title and introduce subject
• Give your objectives (purpose, aim, goal)
• Announce your outline
• Make a transition between the introduction and the body
39

• The Middle
• Sequencing your ideas
• Keeping audience’s attention
• Signposting or signaling where you are
• Linking ideas, sections/making transitions
40

• The End
• Brief summary of what you have talked
• A short conclusion
• Thanks to audience for listening
• A invitation to ask questions, make comments or open a
discussion
41

Group discussion
• What skills are important in making presentation?
42

• Your attitude
 Are you interested and confident about your topic?
– If no, get another one
– If you, act like it
 If you are not excited, you cannot expect audience to be.
 Do not talk down to audience
– You know more than them about this topic
– They know more than you about other stuff
 Practice makes perfect
– Rehearse in front of other people and seek feedback
43
Guideline for conducting presentation – (1)

• Creating interest and establishing a relationship with
audience
 Arouse listeners’ interest from the beginning. E.g., In the
introduction show how your subject affects or may affect
their lives
Other techniques are:
– Give an unusual fact or statistic
– Use words like you, we, us, our
– Illustrate with a real life story
– Ask audience to do something, e.g. “raise your hand if you know”
– Ask audience direct or rhetorical questions
– Speaker should be lively and enthusiastic
– Use a variety of media sources
44

• Talk to the audience and avoid dead man talking
 Avoid talking to the floor, to the wall or to the screen
 Avoid hiding behind the podium
 Avoid back to the audience
 Avoid staring at anyone
 Avoid hand/face motionless
45

• Show the slides properly
 Avoid showing a slide for just one or two second before
going on to the next slide
 Audience are new to your talk, give people sufficient time
to grasp the information
46

• Explain things
 Do not expect the audience to find out things for themselves
by reading the slide
 Avoid reading word by word from slides, and do not treat
slides as part of manuscripts
 Make your presentation more explanatory and clearly
explain each slide what it shows
 Give more explanations on visuals like graphs, tables, etc
47

• Explain things
 Being precise in what you say helps the audience
understand it quickly
 Being concise is to use the briefest possible way of
expressing you message, without losing any clarity
48

• Body language
 Eye contact, facial expressions, posture, movements,
gestures.
 A nature part of communication
– to clarify meaning; it is very visual
– to vent nervousness
– to maintain interest
– to emphasize and regulate
49

• Body language (Cont’d)
Constant eye contact to keep audiences’ attention
Natural and friendly facial expressions and smile!
Posture: stand straight but relaxed
Movement and gesture: to indicate a change of focus, keep
audience’s attention
50
Positive body language

• Body language (Cont’d)
x Loss of eye contact: looking at notes, screen, board, floor.
x Stare, or look blankly into people’s eyes
x Nervous ticks
x Movement: slouch or lean, block the screen, swaying back
and forth like a pendulum, a set of “moves” that repeat
during talk
x Gesture: hands in pocket, point at laptop screen (audience
cannot see it)
51
Negative body language

• Use a pointing device or stick
 Find out how the device works before your talk
 Point to where you are explaining
 Do not point at everything in the screen
52

• Keep an eye on time
 Use your allocated time well
 Practice before presentation to ensure you can deliver the
talk on time
53
• Monitor the tempo
 Do not talk too fast or too slow
 Vary temp or voice to emphasize certain things

Handling Questions
54
Answering questions
• Be as clear as possible in your replies
• Clarify the question if necessary
• Do not try to avoid answering the question
• Preparing for the defence

Handling Questions
55
Acting as opponent
• Asking critical questions to
 Judge whether presenter can defend the work
 Test whether the work is solid and can withstand
critical examination
The role of opponent

Handling Questions
56
Acting as opponent
• Problem statement
Has the author explained the problem that is to be
investigated in a clear and understandable way?
Has the author provided convincing arguments for the need
to investigate this problem?
Has the author provided convincing arguments that
conducting the investigation will lead to the possibility of
obtaining a solution, or increasing our understanding of the
problem domain?
Questions you might ask

Handling Questions
57
Acting as opponent
• Aims and objectives
Has the author identified a specific aim to be achieved in the
project?
Is the identified aim explained in a clear and understandable
way?
Has the author derived a list of specific objectives from the
aim?
Are the objectives presented in a clear and structured way?
Do the objectives support the aim, i.e. will fulfilling all the
objectives lead to the aim being achieved?

Handling Questions
58
Acting as opponent
• Method
 Has the author clearly identified and explained the methods that could
potentially be used in the investigation?
 Has the author provided an insightful discussion of advantages and
disadvantages of each potential method for the investigation?
 Has the author clearly stated which method (or methods) was selected
for the investigation?
 Has the author provided convincing arguments for the selected
method(s)?
 Has the author described clearly how the selected method(s) will be
applied?

Handling Questions
59
Acting as opponent
• Data
 Has the author presented the collected data in a clear,
understandable, systematic and correct way?
 Is the collected data sufficient, given the stated aims and objectives
of the project?

Handling Questions
60
Acting as opponent
• Analysis
Has the author made a thorough and systematic analysis of
the data obtained?
Is the analysis described in a clear and understandable way?
If the data are quantitative, has the author applied
significance tests or other numerical evaluation techniques in
a relevant and correct way?
Has the author evaluated the stated aims and objectives in
the light of the data obtained?

Handling Questions
61
Acting as opponent
• Conclusions
Has the author provided conclusions that are relevant, given
the stated aims and objectives?
If the work contains one or more hypotheses, does the
author draw conclusions about whether these hypotheses
are supported or falsified by the results?
Has the author provided valid arguments for the stated
conclusions?

Handling Questions
62
Acting as opponent
• Discussion and future work
Has the author discussed the work in an insightful way, and
thereby placed the work into a wider context?
Has the author identified relevant and plausible
continuations of the work?

Handling Questions
63
Acting as opponent
• Overall assessment
Were the objectives of the project fulfilled?
Was the aim of the project reached?
Has the project furthered our understanding of the problem
investigated?
Will this work be useful in the future?
Is the report well structured and understandable?
Is the report well written?

Handling Questions
64
Acting as opponent
• Additional questions
Does the author have a critical viewpoint, i.e. have sources
used in the work been critically evaluated by the author?
Have terms of importance to the report been clearly
defined?
Is the use of terms and definitions consistent throughout the
report?
Is it clear when something is the author’s own work, and
when it is someone else’s work?

65
Thank You
For More Info Visit:
www.myassignmenthelp.net

What is a Scientific Presentation ?

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (20)

Similar to What is a Scientific Presentation ?

Similar to What is a Scientific Presentation ? (20)

More from Steve Johnson

More from Steve Johnson (14)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

What is a Scientific Presentation ?